If users don’t understand your data solution or the data behind it, it doesn’t matter how beautiful, performant or powerful it is - it won’t deliver business value. Data literacy is fundamental for an effective organisation and is a keystone for any successful data & analytics project. It is clear, however, that data literacy is a challenge area in many businesses, and society as a whole. A 2018 survey of business decision-makers found only 24% were “confident in their ability to read, work with, analyze and argue with data” [1], a finding recapitulated in the lay public [2] and demonstrated plainly during the global COVID-19 pandemic [3].

To traverse these rapids, we are in need of more than tools, but a wide knowledge of how they are used and the data concepts behind them. In this talk, we examine the impact of Data Literacy on business data projects through an in-depth case study of a Sales Compensation Plan to:

I. Illustrate concretely the concept of data literacy and the threat poor data literacy poses to an organisation.
II. Understand that data literacy is about people and not solutions.
III. Define practises and report design techniques to improve data literacy with consistent interventions.

Without data literacy, we will fail to navigate the waters of information that are ever-rising; we risk not only falling overboard, but even drowning. However, instilling data in organisational values, engaging people with and about information in the right ways, and implementing accessible design practises can not only keep us afloat, but propel us onward to brave new worlds of effectiveness and value.

[1] How to Drive Data Literacy in the Enterprise (2018)
[2] Borner, K. et al. (2016) Investigating aspects of data visualization literacy using 20 information visualizations and 273 science museum visitors. Information Visualization 15(3) 198-213.
[3] Advancing Data Literacy in the Post-Pandemic World (2021)